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Think of it: The government prints more money or perhaps — god forbid — it taxes some corporate profits, then it showers the cash down on the people so they can continue to spend. As a result, more and more capital accumulates at the top. And with that capital comes more power to dictate the terms governing human existence.
UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers.
Meanwhile, UBI also obviates the need for people to consider true alternatives to living lives as passive consumers. Solutions like platform cooperatives, alternative currencies, favor banks, or employee-owned businesses, which actually threaten the status quo under which extractive monopolies have thrived, will seem unnecessary. Why bother signing up for the revolution if our bellies are full? Or just full enough?
Under the guise of compassion, UBI really just turns us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers. Once the ability to create or exchange value is stripped from us, all we can do with every consumptive act is deliver more power to people who can finally, without any exaggeration, be called our corporate overlords.
No, income is nothing but a booby prize. If we're going to get a handout, we should demand not an allowance but assets. That's right: an ownership stake.
https://medium.com/s/powertrip/universal-basic-income-is-silicon-valleys-latest-scam-fd3e130b69a0
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday October 15 2018, @06:03AM (3 children)
The logic here has more twists and turns than the Paso de los Caracoles.
Couldn't come up with a car analogy, so a road analogy will have to do....
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 15 2018, @10:26AM (2 children)
Yes, but the article can be boiled down to a complaint that "UBI bad, because it removes moral hazard!" and a typical logically upsidedown assertion that giving more money to the poor will only end up making the rich richer. What makes the rich richer is tilting the playing field to favor them, and if that isn't enough, just naked, outright, big giveaways of our tax dollars to the rich.
Really, the whole thing sounds like a rich person's whine. Or perhaps, ironically, a warning: "Inherited wealth meant I didn't have to work a day in my life and that made me into an irresponsible, insensitive idiot! Don't let UBI do that to you!!"
I don't feel entirely comfortable with the idea of a UBI. Universal Employment sounds like a better way, though the article trashes that one too, as busywork. As if we won't be able to find enough work of real value for everyone, and that even before the robot apocalypse arrives. There's all kinds of infrastructure that's being neglected, there's tons of urban renewal to try... they're full of it on that busywork assertion.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @02:34PM (1 child)
I never understood how UBI doesnt' lead to runaway inflation. If everyone has more money, the price of everything will go up, or at least for the goods and services that people on UBI use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:03PM
Because you haven't put more than 2 seconds of thought into it?
UBI covers the bare minimum. It would be really hard to raise a family properly on it, thus people will be inspired to work so they can afford more than basic food and shelter. As you earn more money the tax percentage goes up until you reach the point where you are paying more in taxes than you get form UBI. If people were going to be bums that do the bare minimum we would not be seeing anyone go into advanced fields or take on hard jobs with lots of responsibility that pay well. So people will still work.
The easiest explanation is that UBI is welfare for everyone, no strings attached, and working a job rewards you with more money. It would replace all the current welfare programs while eliminating the bureaucratic overhead currently spent trying to enforce "personal responsibility" which is in fact what leads to the welfare trap. Yes the system would fall to pieces if everyone decided to not work, but 95% of people's lives would be unsustainable on UBI so they'd have to do some work anyway.
Alternatively, we could just tax the wealthy at 90% again, that seemed to work pretty well. Sure pissed them off, but it made for a very prosperous period of time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @06:03AM (15 children)
UBI will necessarily reduce economic competitiveness of the country. There goes all our might, power, influence, prosperity, etc. We don't exist in a vacuum. Other countries exist.
UBI makes border control a much bigger monster than it is. Every sort of "easy life" feature attracts low-achieving useless freeloaders. About 7 billion people will want in on the deal. Only the most brutal measures will stop them. (medieval stuff, or Pol Pot stuff, or "showers" and ovens)
Note that the above says nothing about UBI being good or bad in the absence of other nations. UBI for a country can not be done in isolation, and that is a death blow to the idea.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Monday October 15 2018, @06:40AM (8 children)
Except that it is actually being used successfully in other countries right now (northern Europe).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 15 2018, @07:07AM (3 children)
[Citation needed].
No, seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday October 15 2018, @08:25AM (1 child)
The only Northern European country I know that attempted UBI was Finland, and that was a failure.
And even then, it wasn't "proper" UBI, which was supposed to go to everyone, but went just to the unemployed (making it basically just another form of low-income support/unemployment benefit, with a trendy name)
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/Finland-is-killing-its-world-famous-basic-income-experiment--/ [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 15 2018, @09:08AM
Pretty much what I recalled as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:02AM
Repeat it enough and it becomes true.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday October 15 2018, @09:04AM (1 child)
I hope you aren't serious. Have you not seen the numbers of barely literate unemployables migrating for the benefits even in the absence of UBI, and the results of several decades of unfettered migration? It's an economic and demographic disaster, and it will only become worse with time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:08PM
The unemployable aren't unemployable, they work fields where they get insanely more money than they would in their home countries. These people would not be getting UBI without someone committing fraud which we would have investigators looking for. The correct answer is to actually police employers and crack down on employing / exploiting illegal immigrants for lower wages. They are the real problem that no one ever seems to care about and instead blame the symptoms.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Monday October 15 2018, @11:25AM (1 child)
I'm sorry, are you arguing that it isn't causing an uncontrolled migrant problem in Europe? Because it is. It's exactly the reason why a UBI _REQUIRES_ secure borders. A basic lifestyle in Europe or the USA is living like a king in most of the rest of the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:40AM
You simply don't see the opportunity for equality - UBI will be $1 a day and everyone will live in mud huts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday October 15 2018, @07:26AM (3 children)
What do you do with your might, influence or power if a good amount of your population is starving? Use it to keep them in forced starvation? Potentially try to impose the same to other countries?
For what? For the 'benefit' of a very few which are actually 'prosperous'?
What happens when you run out of people to forcefully keep under starvation? 'Cause if you continue on the same path, inevitable you'll run out of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Troll) by crafoo on Monday October 15 2018, @11:27AM (2 children)
"run out"? They weren't doing anything the robots weren't already taking care of so.... I don't think "running out" of them would be a danger. Obviously, writing this from the ruling class's perspective. I don't think they honestly fear losing population, and in fact spend significant time trying to figure out how to do just that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:54AM
Worse [jhu.edu] than that! [spectator.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday October 15 2018, @12:52PM
Minor specific differences of people vs robots:
- they are obstinately refusing to eat directly from the energy socket and demand organic nutrients (soylent at a minimum)
- they are not willing to part with whatever money - umm... the "mean" to achieve might, influence or power - they (actually don't) have; so they are actually useless as a source for might, influence or power
- unless reigned by fear, they may be willing to violently revolt. And imposing that fear brings in cost
They might be as idiots as you describe.
In extreme: imagine a single human controlling the entire Earth, populated by robots but devoid of any other human being.
Isn't this the apotheosis of might and power and wealth?
But... does it still have any meaning?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday October 15 2018, @03:16PM
A related example: in countries with basic services like healthcare, it is actually easier to go into business than it is the US where buying your own HC will cost a bundle. For example, I'm paying $12,600/yr for HC for me and my wife (crappiest cheapest plan but at least I get some tax benefit with a Health Savings Account). I started my own business in 2003 when I could buy HC for something less than $150 each so it was dooable (~205/mo in 2017 dollars, or $410/mo for us both). It's only dooable now because my business succeeded but to start up with that kind of albatross -- that would be hard.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 15 2018, @04:40PM
I think it would be fair enough to tie UBI to citizenship. No need for border control.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday October 15 2018, @07:20AM
It is always wise to think twice. The article has many harsh words in all directions and seems to be valid on the surface but also ignores lots of factors, influences and ways things work.
The article should be put through the Baloney Detection Kit before taking any word at face value. Please go and read Carl Sagan's "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection". Then read the article again and tell us what you have found.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @07:24AM (3 children)
Give the newly printed money to the poor. The inflation will act as tax, doesn't even matter if the trillions are hidden away.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Monday October 15 2018, @12:17PM (2 children)
The wealthy don't keep their riches locked up in fiat money. They have it in real estate, precious metals, gem stones, stocks. Inflation only taxes those who are bound to fiat money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
What about those of us who prefer Toyotas over Fiats?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:10PM
Is that the new blockchain? I can never keep up
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday October 15 2018, @07:39AM
TMB is in. As is khallow. jmorris is still recovering from having gone the full jmorris, so there is no telling when he will be back, or if, when he does come back, if it will still be him. The re-programmers over at Crypto-gab can be rather thorough, harsh, but thorough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 15 2018, @07:42AM (4 children)
... UBI will free us all up to pursue our creative interests. I think he must have a trust fund or something because he does alright despite never having had a job in the sixteen years I've known him.
However lots of people if they had UBI would never get out of bed. They'd just put a palette load of Cheetohs next to their beds then hook up their TV to their alarm clock.
Me if I had UBI I'd do nothing but write [warplife.com].
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:43AM
Working-eating-sleeping-repeat pattern ain't that much different from that, except that you are also exhausted all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:14PM (2 children)
That is incredibly naive. I've been unemployed, and it was fun for a little bit goofing off doing nothing productive aside from job searching, but it wore off quick. People want to be useful, sitting in bed all day eating cheetos sounds fun for one day. One.
What kind of bullshit is this anyway? You already have access to enough social programs you could do that... Is that AC who shit talks you all the time right about your persona being a lie? Why did you create soggy jobs if you only want to eat cheetos in bed?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 16 2018, @12:47AM
-lessness on my own projects, but some people I know
I work like a demon it's just that I don't always get paid for it
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @06:16AM
After that, you'll need weed to go with your bed and cheetos.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lester on Monday October 15 2018, @08:04AM (1 child)
????!!!!
UBI *ALLOWS* us *IF WE WANT TO* to turn us from stakeholders or even citizens to mere consumers
I have many objections to UBI, but your argument is based in a false premise. UBI doesn't forbid you work as employee or to run your own business. So you will turn into a passive consumer if that is what you want to do. You may argue that is what many people would do. And unfortunately I agree. And that is my one of my objections: I don't want to work for feeding parasites. But that is different from being obliged to anything
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:30PM
Even working you would be a parasite on the system. One person's contribution is overshadowed by the benefits they receive, yay collective efficiency!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:43AM
My dream job, especially now since marijuana has been legalized in my state.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday October 15 2018, @10:45AM (2 children)
The Fed prints money, not the government. And they are already doing so. They just give the money to banks, instead of directly to Joe Sixpack. This guarantees that capital accumulates at the top. Over the long term, people who aren't getting free money will tend to accumulate debt, while the banks who are getting the free money will end up owning everything.
If you have UBI and its value remains constant then there is a limit to how much capital can be accumulated unless the total wealth in the entire system increases, which would be a good thing no?
What does this even mean? Being alive involves a certain minimum level of consumption. You don't have a choice there. What do you want be a "stakeholder" in and how is it relevant?
All those things involve risk. UBI would remove some of the risk so more people could explore alternatives.
Revolution is a nice fantasy. In reality it tends to involve a lot of dead people.
What corporate overlords? Instead of working for them or doing business with them, start your own. With UBI there would be less risk.
Buy or create your own assets. Or don't. Your choice.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday October 15 2018, @11:32AM (1 child)
kind of a key point you hid up at the top of your post. The Fed manufacturers new debt through banks. Citizens are not allowed to create assets without incurring debt to the federal reserve and it's banks. Reversing this system and handing over the cash to people instead of banks in the form of UBI is an interesting idea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 15 2018, @02:17PM
It's quite possible to do that. It just takes somewhat longer to do than borrowing money.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @03:43PM
What UBI enables, is the reduction of broad subsidies in a way that allows certain markets to float again. Everybody in the U.S. recieves a ton of subsidies already. Or did you really think that that $1 bag of chips really costs 50 cents to make? We are already on UBI. It just comes in the form of purchases. particularly food purchases.
The world has to shift to a more conservation oriented tax strategy. Probably the best way to do this would be a graduated VAT replacing essentially all other forms of taxation. But you can't do that if competing countries don't agree to also use graduated VAT. The reason for that should be obvious. The non-VAT countries will have cheaper trade goods. This is why the "fair tax" was laughed at by pretty much everybody. It is a good idea, but without international treaty it is niave. So we have to look at other options. Enter UBI.
If UBI is implemented, and industrial farm subsides are capped, over time inflation will move the subsidies capital into consumer pockets. People will have more money, but food prices will go up. Small farms will more competitive, which result in more local food production and less dependence on freight. Which means that fuel production subsidies can also be reduced. Consumer fuel taxes would probably go up as well, which is good, because it will create demand for heavy and light rail. In both cases we are talking about way more employment in agriculture and manufacturing in all states, and a significant reduction in carbon footprint at the same time.
Now as for UBI being gamed. You can bet your ass it will be. It will be extremely bad for illegal aliens in particular, since they won't get UBI, and food costs will go up dramatically. So for all of those righties who are blaming foreigners... Yeah, UBI will make this country very unfriendly to immigrants. There would probably be some growth in white slavery in the U.S. because of it as well.
There are some inherent race conditions in the U.S. economic policy. We could easily be looking at a 1929 style crash in the next 20 years or so, complete with soup kitches, riots etc. Other countries know this. So there is a compelling need to make the economy look more like what it is, and less like what wallstreet says it is. We can't prevent all failure modes, but we can increase the transparency, which will make the fluctuations less severe. UBI _may_ do that to some degree.
UBI is kind of a back door way of doing a lot of stuff that needs to get done. It might work. It might not. But it isn't a welfare system. There is a method to the madness. The philosophy is crap. But the economics are not neccesarily as bad as you might think. It might work, it might not. But we need to do something, so any decision is better than no decision.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @03:55PM
Is its complete lack of math. The subject in question is econ, yet no economic terminology is used. All Doug really did was waste a couple of A4 pages bitching, as far as I can tell. OK. Good luck with that.
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday October 16 2018, @12:20AM (2 children)
Land has renewable value. You can only sell it to someone once, but you can rent it to someone every year.
You can imagine representing the rental value of land as a certain number of rental credits per year.
These rental credits can be treated as money, backed by the market-value of living on, or operating a business on the land
Unlike tax dollars, these rental credits can be distributed / spent every year as long as the government owns the land. They don't need to be taken from someone else every year in the form of tax.
So when existing tax revenues are spent to increase the size of the land-bank (ie to buy more land), the amount of future tax that needs to be taken is reduced, by the amount that can be replaced with rental-credits.
Eventually we get to the point where a living-wage can be distributed to every citizen with none of it coming from tax.
The value of individual pieces of land in the land bank will fluctuate of course, but the total number of rental credits can be fixed, representing the total annual rental value of the land-bank, and then divided equally among the citizens, who can trade them as they see fit.
The remaining land in the country can still be privately owned, and other forms of minimum income support like the minimum wage, food-stamps, etc can be discontinued.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @02:15AM (1 child)
Solutions like that sent Russia into famine. Giving beurocrats the right to tell people what they can and can't do with a piece of land, is like putting the whole country under an HOA. And one thing HOA's don't like, is dirty nasty agricultural workers. They all would much rather starve than suffer an afternoon having to deal with the smell of manure from the neighbors garden. Which is why I personally support the idea of cannibalism to solve the economy. Starting with HOA's, then maybe journalists. Then who knows. :p
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday October 16 2018, @03:54AM
Firstly, you write as if private agriculture on land leased from the government is unheard of or impossible, but it's already a very common practice in many parts of the world.
Secondly, you appear to be confusing being a landlord with running the business that operates on that land. It's not as if every owner of an office building who rents out office space is also running the in the companies they rent to. Indeed that would be an unusual arrangement. Certainly not the norm.
Thirdly, you write as if government bureaucrats don't tell people what they can and can't do with private land. But they clearly do, via zoning restrictions, development approval, and so on. If this led to famine we'd all be starving.
Fourth it wouldn't be "the whole country", by any means, as I explicitly stated in the original post.
In fact all of the arrangements I described (other than the per-capita rental-credits) exist in many capitalist, democratic countries already, without the problems you fear.
If you're going to attack my solution, you'll need to attack either the concept of rental-credits, or of a per-citizen minimum-income backed by those rental credits. The other parts already exist.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:46AM
When I think of Silicon Valley I think of a lot of nerds trying to work to better the world in the greatest way they can. "Scam" scarcely comes to mind. I think that reflects on the quality of this article/author.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:04AM
Fully bellies aside, who wants a revolution anyway? Revolutions suck. The people who sell them suck. French revolution? Sucked. Guillotines suck. Communist revolutions? Sucked. Oh, look.. that guy's a traitor to the revolution... maybe I am. I'd better report him before he reports me. Fill the gulags. Sucked.
Most revolutions suck. Here in the USA, we got lucky. So it's frighteningly easy to sell the idea of revolution to people here and we're also damned lucky that nobody has sold us one recently, because... did I happen to mention that THEY SUCK?
Seriously.
FUCK REVOLUTION. I'm tired of hearing about it.
Put your signs down, quit cutting corners on your job, quit being a corrupt bastard, and if you're not a corrupt bastard call out the ones who are. Quit looking for wholesale change because, you aren't prepared to have a dozen semi-trucks full of change dumped in your driveway. That's what revolution is, and it sucks.
Seriously.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:39AM
I was a randroid libertarian in my young adulthood. I think that gives me a bit more credibility calling this soylentnews post out as exceptionally bad, even by soylentnews standards. If it looks like a troll, smells like a troll, sounds like a troll... No, I didn't RTFA, nor do I write it off based on context SN chose to give it here. But this AC is obviously not concerned about being seen as logically coherent. Fiat currency has been with us for what, half a century? People still create and exchange a lot of value. I'm not saying that evil overlord policies aren't preventing a thousand fold increase in the amount of value created, but they still create a remarkable amount of value. Sure, there are people that want to eliminate or reduce 'social security' / 'entitlements'. Just like there are people that want to increase, perhaps to an extreme, those redistribution of wealth via taxation and/or fiat currency manipulation. Kind of a big aspect of the worlds politics for like, ever. If this quoted sentence on its own read like an innocent use of hyperbole, that would be one thing, but it reads like trolly propaganda. Makes the slashdot crowd look more respectable in comparison...